Ray S

Added @Dennis_C, thanks for joining the potential GB. Is anyone able to help out @bootneck with his query a couple of posts ago? I know I am unable to help but hopefully someone will know. We're nearly 1/3rd of the way to the Bunfight, any more interested with the expanded range of this proposal? Cheers, Ray

A quick bump for this. I've proposed expanding this to the Middle East for British forces and/or civilian subjects, details are edited into the first post. I've widened the criteria but would like military to be on detachment or full postings to the region, not stopovers or just a day or two getting repairs done. To make things better for civilian modellers, anything connected with the region would be fine, like airlines based in the countries, serving the countries from abroad, or any civilian transport based in the countries, or ships that used the local ports on a regular basis, as the Canberra did at Aden. This should allow a wide and varied subject choice. Please let me know if you're interested still or newly. Ray

Cheers @PattheCat, I was able to sort things Quite right, I found that to be so @stever2192, thanks for that advice for the front issue. I went slightly nuclear for the aft problem! It did @Retired Bob, but I did remove a little extra too. I brushpainted the interior with Revell and Humbrol acrylics, but did try and make sure I left contact points clear of paint. Any paint ingress was cleared later with a curved blade, a sanding pad or a fine file. I ommited a few of the transfers which could be added as they were not going to be seen. I then did plenty of test fitting and adjusting and finally committed to glue: The nose interior section went in well with minimal adjustment. Then I glued up the fuselage after a couple more test fits and adjustments. It was only when I was adding tape to hold things in place that I noticed this: Part of the nose was short shot, but I should be able to wrangle someting up to fix that. The ultimate upshot was that the fuslage went together reasonably well despite all the innards. Oh, by the way, I had cut out about 1" from the floor in front of the aftmost bulkhead and then sanded down that bulkhead quite a bit (almost the whole width of the section that needed Humbrol 74) and that made the fuselage close properly. I'm left with some fine filling to do along the seam, but I'll do that once I've fitted the transparencies to stop dust getting inside. That's it for now, thanks for looking, Ray

Thanks @PlaStix, I've got another positive update, but it might not seem like it early on! First, some positive. I've been able to remove the 'protective' film from the transfers. Here is my 'toolkit' that I used: I was able to tease up a little of the film, then holding the transfers in one pair of tweezers, I was able to allow them to stay in steam from the kettle for a short while, whilst teasing the film a little more with the blunter tweezers. After a while, the film ripped and I could steam them no more. The pan of boiling water now comes into play, along with the cotton bud. I dipped the bud into the water, then rubbed the bud onto the remaining film, and that then started to complete the job. It took about five to ten minutes per transfer. I've masked up the underside of the wings and tailplanes, along with the fuselage and then, bouyed by my success with the yellow previously, proceeded to add ColourCoats Light Green to the wings. Disaster! It wouldn't spray after two passes, and was spattering left right and centre. I was very nervous trying to clean the airbrush, and I asked for advice in the Tools and Tips section of this fine Forum. Plenty of good advice ensued, for which I am forever grateful. For some really stupid reason I was very apprehensive about the strip down and rebuild, but I've not got the hang of it, I hope... This is the sort of thing I was getting: Three or so days later, I was finally more consistent with the airbrush, and cleaning up every time I finished with a deep clean: I then tried another new technique, masking for the camouflage. Contrail had supplied transfers for a silver-doped aircraft, but I'm doing a notional WWII training scheme. Back when I brush painted, I never masked for the camo (except once years ago when I did a splinter scheme on a German Stuka) but my airbrushing skills haven't got so far as freehanding 1/72 (or any other scale) camo. I dug out my 3mm Tamiya Tape for Curves and their normal masking tapes and set about. As Contrail hadn't given a colour scheme diagram for this, I downloaded a scheme from Scalemates for a Supermarine Stranraer which was one of the few large biplanes that had a camo pattern, and used that as my guide. Halfway through doing the masking, I looked down to the unit beside me and there was a Matchbox Supermarine Stranraer which I had in stock, which has the Revell instructions inside! Doh. It was at this point I realised that I was doing the upper wing camo pattern but on the lower wing. Another Doh! I soon rectified that and had: I was quite pleased with that. I rubbed down the edges of the tape for curves, then sprayed the Light Green overall again just to try and seal the edges. This afternoon I've given it the first coat of ColourCoats Light Earth. So there we go, a few ups, one down and a couple of Doh moments. The fun will really start when I try and do something about those engines, hopefully before this Group Build finishes! Thanks for looking and getting this far, Ray

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and advice. I've had a good session with the airbrush today, and the strip down and put together is getting better now. I think I need to improve my technique now, but I'm getting there Thanks all again, Ray

I've got the H+S cleaning brushes with the reamer so hopefully that's okay. I had a glimpse of that view the second time I used this airbrush. I sprayed ColourCoats Yellow over a pink undercoat and it was perfect. I'd certainly like to see more views like that but I know it'll come in time @Adam Poultney, thanks for that, I think I've found that out now myself. At least I'm happier now taking the airbrush apart, @Mike, thanks so much for your comment, it was really appreciated and meant a lot Ray

Hello all. I printed off the advice that has been kindly given, and put that advice into action this morning. Another good deep clean, careful reassembly and the airbrush now sprays well. Therefore I'd like to say a huge thank you again for the advice. All I need to do now is get consistency with stirring the paint and thinning properly the enamels as the nozzle soon blocked again, but I know it's definitely my fault this time. Patience and practice pays off in time. All the best everyone, and thanks again Ray PS I am now so much more confident about dismantling and reassembling the airbrush, so that's a win

I've often wondered why there's a 'hide' option. I mean, you post something, hide it and then no one, not even yourself, can find it again. If you wanted the post gone, like potentially for reasons that @PattheCat gave, would a PM to one of our fine Administrators or @Mike asking them to delete the thread work? I'm sure they'd have the Power. Ray

@PattheCat, thanks for your reply. You prompted me to try the air valve, that seems okay. I've now ordered some Iwata Superlube and also a set of 'O' rings for the airbrush. It's funny what you learn you need in hindsight, so again thanks. @Hunker, thanks for your reply too. Everything looks okay, but I've ordered the 'O' rings just in case. @cmatthewbacon, thanks for your very detailed guide. I must admit that I did wonder about the needle and it's fitting, I didn't have the feel for when it was in the right position due to lack of experience. I do have liquid reamer which I'll try tomorrow, and I'll follow your other guidance too. I think there may still be some paint inside. I had been using ColourCoats paint with naphtha thinners and with the exceptional heat we had last week it may have dried inside a bit rapidly especially as the naphtha evaporates off so fast anyway. My heartfelt thanks to all three of you for so kindly trying to help me out. I'll update as soon as I can Ray

Hello all. Last year I decided I'd finally take the plunge and buy a couple of airbrushes. I chose the Harder and Steenbeck Evolution CRPlus 2024. I've watched their tutorial videos and thought it was a nice, easily used device. I bought one for acrylics, and one for enamels. I've used the enamel one three times and it seems like I didn't clean it properly. Yesterday, I tried spraying and it was spattering paint here there and everywhere. I revisited the tutorial, and took the airbrush apart, step by step with the video. I cleaned up the airbrush, and then again following the tutorial, put it back together again. I felt I'd made a big step. I put some white spirit into the airbrush, and did a test spray. I had adjusted the spray limiter to a quarter turn for a narrow spray, but it sprayed a very wide amount. The paint pot also bubbled without me doing the blowback trick. I redid the strip down but no luck. This morning, with a clearer head, I redid the strip down again, now the bubbling has gone, but the airbrush still sprayed white spirit even when I hadn't pulled the trigger, only pushed it down. The trigger seems to be seated properly, after fitting it and the rest of the internals pushing and pulling the trigger did all the things it's supposed to do when you check that out. It also spayed the wide pattern again. Any ideas of what I've done wrong? I'm fairly certain that the issue is me and not the airbrush. So far I've not had problems with the one I use for acrylics but at the moment I'm scared to take that one apart for a deep clean. Thanks for reading this, Ray

Hello all, thanks for the comments too. I've been making a little progress on this subject while the weather has been so hot. The Airfix Shackleton has plenty of internal detail. I have plenty of paints in my alternative 'stash', but was there a Humbrol 133 Brown in there? No Did my local model shop or Hobbycraft have it? No. Not even spaces in the numbered rack for a 133 at Hobbycraft. I've used an alternative instead, so any purists may want to look away when I get to the photographs. I've been having fun with the interior, but mainly at the expense of the Universes weird sense of humour. I am painting the interior with acrylics, and some of the ones are Revell, and are more like blancmange than paint, so required a little thinning. With my Humbrol paints I can gently dip the brush into some water (not getting it too wet) and then can paint that well with no problems. With the Revell, there appears to be a very fine line between just right and it beading. I eventually won that battle, so I got my own back on the Universe. This is where I am at now: As you can see, I've not added any paint to the fuselage insides yet, I'm just waiting for things to cool down a little so I can airbrush it. The interior fits well into the port half, and just a well into the starboard half. And Also fits nicely along the top of the fuselage. But: Not so good underneath! I originally read about the poor fit way back in 2015/6 when the kit was new so I am not surprised. I know I cannot blame paint build up inside. I think I read that paring away near the rear entry door solves the problem, if it doesn't, I'm going to trim the interior short as virtually nothing will be seen anyway, but I do prefer to use the bits that I've paid for. I am going to continue building the interior and get it on photographic record for myself at least, but time will tell what I eventually do. There is some slight warping of the fuselage which explains one or two of the gaps, but it is minimal. Hopefully I will be able to update shortly. Thanks for looking, Ray

@S-boat 55, Sam, you are well correct, you'll know it's not there and apart from that, well, it's been paid for so do it! This is coming along grandly by the way. Ray

This is a great result on the lifeboat. I've built two of them myself so identified with your troubles. As you say, not keeping to the instructions is key. Ray

@TheyJammedKenny!, I used ColourCoats naphtha thinners approx 50:50 and 18 PSI. I hope that helps Ray

Hopefully one day @stevehed you will get your Virginia. I thought I'd missed out forever but one of the 5 kit sets cropped up luckily at my Model Club one day. I still regret getting rid of my Contaril Zeppelin Staaken when I did, but at least now I know there's a Roden option, but that certainly wouldn't qualify for this GB! A couple of days ago I beat my demons and decided to finally, finally try my ColourCoats paint through the airbrush. I have used them for years (from when they were produced by White Ensign) and bought loads from Jamie at Sovereign Hobbies and now also from Resolution Hobbies, but had always brush-painted with them on aircraft and ships. I'd found ways that worked for me, but had always read about how good the paints are on this, our favourite Modelling Forum and in magazines. Last year I bought my first airbrush since I got rid of an old Badger one in the early 1990s, for the same reason as I got rid of the Staaken - no space in a studio flat. I'd been pottering around with Tamiya paints on various kits and found them very easy to spray, and also to clean up afterwards. But I really wanted to use enamels. I bought another airbrush for exclusive enamel use and left it in my cupboard. The other day I eventually used it for the Humbrol Pink enamel undercoat from the previous update of mine, and found that things weren't too bad. On Wednesday, I mixed up a batch of ColourCoats RAF Yellow and added that to the undersides of the wings and lower tailplane. Oh wow! what a difference! It covered like a dream, went down lovely and smoothly, and seemed to cover a larger area for less paint. I'll let you into a little secret - I was absolutely buzzing after that spraying session, I could have flown without wings! Sad, I know but there we go. I ended up with this: I know it needed an extra coat but as you can probably tell, I was very happy. Yesterday I sprayed the fusleage lower sections and gave the wings another coat and then, after checking up to see how soon afterwards ColourCoats can be sprayed over, gave the sections that needed it another coat (generally only two coats in total): While the first coat of yesterday's spraying session was drying, I tried one of the 'gash' transfers that I showed you a little while ago. The one where I had peeled off some of the protective film seems to have settled down well on some flat plastic card: Just after I'd placed it, I used a cotton bud soaked in hot water to continue with trying to get rid of the residue on the roundel, and it is gradually going. I may well have to be a little patient removing all of the required markings from the rest of the sheet, but I may well be able to use the kit transfers after all. My major hope is to be able to use the serial numbers and letters at least. Well that's it for a very positive update, I'm now waiting for some Light Green and Light Earth to arrive from Resolution Hobbies (due tomorrow!) for shadow shading the lower wings and I've also plumped for their new varnishes too which have had some great reviews here if you haven't seen it: Hopefully anothe update soon, thanks for looking, Ray